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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

JOHN B. CALLIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE KU-KLUX KLAN

From the front door of the Museum I can
see the stately white house once occupied by General John B. Callis; hero of
the Iron Brigade; the tough old man who led his soldiers at South Mountain,
Gainesville, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. Who was injured at the Second Battle of Bull
Run. Who was shot three times at Gettysburg and carried a bullet in his chest
from July 1, 1863, the first day of the battle until September 28, 1898, the
day he died. After lying on the
battlefield for 43 hours with what should have been a mortal wound, he survived
and returned to the Army to serve in Washington and in the South during
reconstruction.

Callis House in Lancaster
Wisconsin

Last week I found a photo of Callis online
(above) that was taken in 1868 during a period of his life that was unlike
anything he had previously experienced.
He found that the "peace" following the war was terrifying for
some who had expected freedom and opportunity after the chains had fallen away.
Callis saw at first hand the birth of an American terrorist organization, the
Ku Klux Klan.

Klan Regalia typical of Northern Alabama in
the 1860’s

When I look at the photo of Callis I notice
the alert, determined blue eyes - then I see his hands. Those hands are thin and appear weak. The drape of his clothing reveals a very thin,
almost emaciated body. It is obvious
that the enemy bullet dwelling in his lung has not surrendered in its purpose
of killing him. He is seemingly an
invalid, but look again at those eyes, the jaw set, and you realize he is not
willing to suffer his body to hold him back.
He is a man looking forward. He
is a man on a mission.

From July until October of 1863 Callis
remained in Gettysburg, at the home of D.A. Buehler where he had been
taken. Army doctors expected to him to die
from his wounds. For months he was too
weak to endure rail transportation to his home in Wisconsin. His wife, expecting that he would not
survive, came to Gettysburg to care for him and stayed for all those months. Eventually
he insisted on taking the train ride home, whether he lived or died. He lived.

After his return to Lancaster, he was
discharged on December 28, 1863 as physically disabled, but as soon as he
could, he returned to the Veteran Reserve Corps. The V.R.C. was formed in 1863. Initially called the Invalid Corps, it
allowed men "unable to bear the march" to serve in more sedate
duties, freeing the able bodied to serve in the field. From May 24, 1864 to July 1865 he served as
Commander of the 7th Regiment, V.R.C., which served as part of Washington D.
C.'s home guard and military police force. During a portion of that period he
served as Superintendent of the War Department buildings in Washington,
D.C. He said that during his
superintendence he saw President Lincoln almost every day when he came in to
read and reply to his telegraph messages.

Callis had not seen the end of
battles. He participated in the
desperate defense of Washington during the raid of Jubal Early on July 11th and
12th 1864. With very few regular army
units in Washington it fell on the V.R.C. to man the forts encircling the
city. He was taken to his post at Fort Brand
by ambulance, and directed his hobbled veterans, many of whom carried rebel
lead, in the fight against a hardened rebel army. Three weeks after the battle Judge Mills of
Lancaster visited Washington and was given a tour of the battlefield by
Callis. He wrote a letter home:

“MR. COVER: - Here I am at the Headquarters of Major
Callis, 7th Regiment Reserve Corps.
He has under his command five links of the iron chain that girds
Washington. – This is the style of this system of forts on the north side of
the Potomac…he was engaged in a desperate battle with rebels under Breckenridge
and Early around these fortifications. “The rebels fought us three days,” says
the Major. “It was a formidable invasion designed to devastate Maryland and
Pennsylvania with fire and sword…Mount this horse, I will show you what war
does.” On we dash on the ferocious cavalry horse, over the battle ground; there
is a field as bare as Sahara; the best corn in Maryland grew there a few days
ago; it is trodden down like a brick yard.
There – stood President Lincoln cheering on his soldiers; a surgeon is
shot down by his side, “Surely that means me,” said the President, “a sad
mistake for my friend the doctor.”

He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on
May 18, 1863 and to Brevet Colonel in October of that year. After the end of the Civil War, he was made
an officer of the regular army’s 45th infantry, and stationed in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1865 he was made an assistant commissioner
in the Freedman's Bureau under General Oliver O. Howard. The purpose of the Callis’ work in the Freedmen’s
Bureau was to assist the 439,000 newly freed slaves of Alabama in obtaining
employment, education, food and housing and to assure that their rights,
including voting rights, were respected. On March 14, 1867 the Senate confirmed
his appointment to Brigadier General by Brevet citing “Gallant and Meritorious
Service in the Field.” He had written letters seeking this higher ranking,
citing fighting in eighteen battles; “I…flatter
myself that I have acquitted myself credibly. I ask for this Bvt. Because I see
others who have it who I know have not done half the service, nor received half
the punishment in the way of wounds that I have”

As a commissioner of the bureau, he
procured large amounts of food grains which were distributed to both black and
white citizens in need. He worked with
charitable northern groups to build schools for black children. He also helped organize a local "Union
League" that for a while became a potent political force. Most white Alabamians boycotted elections and
found free Negroes wandering about unsupervised unsettling, and black Federal
occupation troops intolerable. Until the
states of the defeated Confederacy adopted new constitutions guaranteeing equal
rights, they could not be re-admitted to the Union.

To the southern whites Callis was just
another carpetbagger, those northerners who, as they saw it had come to the
south to enrich themselves by holding office at taxpayer expense and stealing
as much land and money as the occupation forces backing them would allow.

One of the widely publicized events of
Callis stay in Huntsville, Alabama occurred when a group of Negroes came to his
office, and told him that a white man nearby had tied one of his former slaves
to a post and was whipping her. Callis
mounted his horse and hurried to the scene. What happened next was described by
him to a reporter in an 1894 Janesville Gazette article:

"He found the man cow-hiding his victim most
brutally.

"Stop that!" he cried.

"I'll stop when I get ready." said the
southerner defiantly.

General Callis
dismounted and started into the yard.
There was a movement of the other man's hand that told of a pistol, and
the general's sword was out in an instant (he had no gun). The next moment the man-beater had been cut
down and the woman was free."

His reputation as a man not to be fooled
with spread as he dealt with ongoing incidents of abuse of freedmen, and
challenges to duels by "fire-eaters" who sought excuses to kill
him. Accepting one challenge, he chose
the following as the means for the duel: Each man was to be nailed in leather
trousers to a board facing the other at arms length. They would then use Bowie Knives
to carve each other up. "I will cut your heart out," Callis
snarled. His challenger beat a hasty
retreat.

Racist Poster of Hiester Clymer, white
supremacist candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania (1866). Without the overt racism, similar sentiments
have been expressed in the current budget negotiations where some condemn
“lifetime government dependency.”

Poster source: Library of congress

Callis was angered as whites joined the
newly organized Ku Klux Klan, and began terrorizing freedmen who were the
leaders of their people. Murder,
horse-whipping, arson, and other means were the modus oparandi of the Klan
which had the support of the majority of the native white residents. Determined to put the free Black citizen back
"in his place," the Klan rode by night attacking individual black
households, and making public shows of force.
The Encyclopedia of Alabama puts the Klan in its true perspective: “The
Klan targeted freedpeople, white Republicans, northern missionaries, and
teachers working in black schools.” The intention was to deny freed blacks the
right to vote, hold public office, or participate in any way in the governance
of the state. This terrorism also
stopped freed slaves from leaving their former masters employment, and allowed
their employers the power to beat, rape, or kill them at will. A few examples of the outrages committed are
contained in the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau for 1866:

·Colored man killed for refusing to sign contract,

·Freedman’s wife beaten with club by her employer. Freedman
objected - in the night was taken from his house and whipped nearly to death
with a buggy trace by son of the employer & two others.

·Murderous assault upon returned black Union soldier

·Freed girl beaten to death by two white men

· Freedman brought to
hospital in Montgomery, shot through the head by unknown parties - died in few
hours,

· Freedman killed
with an axe

Just before the
presidential election in 1868, the Ku Klux Klan, in a body alleged to be 1,500
strong, rode into the city of Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama and paraded
in the streets. Callis was there. The
obvious intention of the Klan was to frighten freedmen so that they would not
attempt to vote. Shots were fired, several
Negroes were wounded, and Judge Thurlow, a “scalawag” (an indigenous white who
cooperated with the federal government) was “accidentally shot and killed.”No one in Madison County was ever
punished for participation in the activities of the Ku-Klux-Klan.

Callis, is regarded by most southern
historians as being “an outspoken Radical and a League organizer.” He ran as an independent for Congress in
February of 1868, securing “the nearly united black vote over the official
Republican nominee”, and winning the House seat. He was helped by a boycott of the largest part
of the white population. He was not
seated until July 1868, after the House passed an Act of Admission allowing
five states, including Alabama, back into the union. In Congress he remained an outspoken advocate
for the freedmen of the south. He
received many letters from people in Alabama about the Klan. He introduced into
the Congressional Record the following correspondence, which was one of many similar
letters sent to him:

40thCONGRESS, 3RD SESSION, HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES. MIS. DOC. NO. 23

OUTRAGES BY KU KLUX KLAN.
(To accompany H. Res. No. 408.)

January 18, 1869.—Ordered to be printed.

Office Clerk Circuit Court, 'Madison County,
Alabama

Huntsville, January 4, 1869.

Dear Sir: As our representative in the Congress of
the United States, I would most respectfully urge upon
you the importance of your honorable body taking some
immediate action for the protection of the Union citizens of this portion of
the State of Alabama against the organization of armed
men called the Ku-Klux Klan… Saturday last the organization known
as the Ku-Klux Klan called on Mr. Biglow, a man who has never taken
any part in politics, broke open the doors of his
dwelling-house, knocked his wife down for pleading for
the life of her husband, dragged him from his house and carried
him several miles from the city to a grove, tied a rope around his
neck and swung him to a branch of a tree; when life was about
extinct, cut him down and said to him "You voted for General
Grant, did you; this is the way we intend to treat all
Grant men." After giving him a few swings, each time repeating the
same as above, they turned him loose, warning him to leave the State, or the next
time they would not spare his life; then turned him loose to find his way back
to the city the best way he could... JAMES T. BONE

Callis was the first
to put forth a bill, which was not passed, to investigate the Ku Klux Klan: “By
Mr. Callis:A joint resolution (H. Res. 408) to provide for the appointment of a
special Committee for the investigation of certain outrages committed on loyal
Citizens of Alabama by the Ku-Klux Klan, to the Committee on Reconstruction and
ordered to be printed.” The 41st Congress however did pass
the Enforcement Act, banning the methods used by the Klan. The Klan was
investigated and hundreds of Klan members were arrested. Callis did not run for
re-election, but returned to Lancaster, Wisconsin after his shortened term
ended.

He was elected to the Wisconsin state Legislature in 1874 as a Democrat,
and served one term. The balance of his
life was spent in recurrent bouts of illness caused by the bullet in his lung
and his other injuries. He was a favorite speaker at G.A.R. and Iron Brigade
reunions. He was a complex man, both ambitious and adventurous, a man whose
passions were tempered by his devotion to duty and love of justice. Of Lincoln he said: “Of Mr. Lincoln I have to say that he was the hardest working man I
ever saw up to his tragical death. Mr. Lincoln
proved himself to be a problematical prodigy, as he could solve the knottiest
problem at a glance. It was his brain that
conceived the military necessity of the proclamation from which flowed the
blessing of manumission to the hearts of four millions of bondsmen. He was the prototype of greatness and the friend of
humanity.” John Benton Callis, born in the south was, like Lincoln, a champion of
the freedom of all men regardless of race. He was one of the many we can be
proud of whose greatness and character were molded in Grant County.